|
🎧 Play the Audio
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…
|
My son, Aiden, learned to ride his bike today. He had been complaining about me having him practice riding his too big and too heavy big (two facts I never admitted to him).
Since I introduced him to the certified pre-owned, daddy-tuned up bike, I’ve had him do some number of push-offs before I let him roll it back into the garage. A push-off is what I call holding the handle bars, putting one foot on a pedal while the other foot pushes you on the bike — kinda like you would do on a scooter.
The number I gave him today was 50 (up from 30 he had to do last time). Well, he made it somewhere between 20-30, then he started to try to sit on the seat and pedal. Sure enough he started going longer and longer doing the balancing act.
It clicked
Inevitably, it clicked, and dude didn’t want to get off the bike. He started turning around and all.
I knew it would happen like this. I even told him. To paraphrase, I said “When you figure this out, you’re going to love it. Watch!”
No Dad holding the seat
For learning to ride a bike, I never liked the method of teaching by holding the kid’s seat. Sure, that would quickly make my pain hurt like hell, but also that way doesn’t seem to allow the kid to learn to rely on their own sense of balance and coordination.
I did try to seat method once maybe twice with my son then quickly abandoned it. The push-off method seemed a more logical path way to him trusting himself and being bike to take credit for his success — the part that boosts his self-confidence.
Truth be told, the push-off method was an experiment. I didn’t borrow the idea. I literally thought it’s going to work for him or it won’t and we’ll see what happens.
Hey, it worked
Something I did predict would happen was that by my increasing the number of push-offs dramatically, he would tire of doing them and pressure himself to learn to ride in order to stop having to continue pushing.
HA! That worked exactly as I hoped it would. Torturous or not, it worked.